What's the difference between a hamster and a gerbil? Gerbils have tails, are closer relative to rats and mice, frequently stand on their hind legs, and most originate from Mongolia.
Well, that's not the REAL difference.
Tell someone you've got a hamster and they think you've got a small furry pet. Tell someone you've got a gerbil and they think you're shoving it up your ass. THAT'S the real difference. Thanks to an unfortunate urban legend involving Richard Gere, a tragically misplaced gerbil, and sometimes a lit match, I can never discuss these guys in public.
If I had a choice between the two, I'd go with hamsters. Or guinea pigs. Or rabbits. Or mice, rats, raccoons, capybaras, anything but gerbils. But some people are born into gerbils, some people achieve gerbils, and some people have gerbils thrust upon them. I'm in the third.
I got them from Tom Chan, a guy I knew in high school. He was going to grad school in Ohio, and didn't know how to transport them safely on a plane. He was considering sneaking them in his jacket in a cardboard tube, but the consequences if he got caught, both to the gerbils and himself, weren't worth the risk. So I got them.
The gerbils started off with two names each, a Pokemon name and a Princess Bride name. The big fat one (both were tan) was Fezzik/Pikachu. The skinnier one was Inigo/Jigglipuff. I was more partial to the Princess Bride names, but kept both names for both out of courtesy to the gerbils.
Tom gave me his gerbil food, a glass terrarium, a wheel, and a gerbil ball. I brought them home, put the tank on top of a dresser, and they seemed happy. They're not the sort of pets you play with so much as stare at, like fish. They're houseplants that like to eat sunflower seeds.
For a few months, F/P and I/J were fine. If I put a cardboard tube in there, they'd start chewing through it, and in a day or two it'd be mulched. We go through about a roll of paper towels at work every day, so I grabbed the roll from the trash whenever it was on top. They'd disappear quicker than I could get them in the tank.
One day Inigo/Jigglipuff got sick. I made sure he was eating and drinking, but he was losing weight and sleeping all day. A few days later, he crawled out of the little burrow he made in the mulch. I picked him up and tried to keep him warm in my hands, but he died.
It was a bummer. It was made worse by his burial at sea, which should not be attempted with low flow toilets.
I stopped by a pet store and got a new skinny one, a near match to I/J. I wasn1t planning on pulling a switch on Tom, but it seemed right to keep up the Laural/Hardy, Farley/Spade dynamic. You can't put any thought into buying a gerbil. Pet store employees are used to people buying them, so just look straight ahead, get it done quickly, and immediately walk back to your car.
I called the new guy Fezzik/Bulbasaur. I never used their names, so it was pretty much a moot point. I never use names, even when I talk to humans. If I don't have someone's attention I'll say their name, but otherwise it's nothing but pronouns. I heard it makes people feel welcomed in the conversation, so maybe I should start, forwarding list.
As the gerbils died, forwarding list, they became more nuisance than anything else. It'd take me a few days or weeks to remember to pick a new one up on the way home. Some days I just didn't have the nerve to go in the store and ask for ANOTHER gerbil. Were these guys drumming for Spinal Tap?
I couldn't think of a good name immediately for #4 when he came in, so he never got one. Ditto when #3 died and #5 came in. #5 was a black gerbil with a white spot on his chest, so matching names with a black/white theme would be cool. If only I had been an I Spy fan. When I realized I had been thinking of them as #4 and #5, I decided to make those their names. Uncreative, but functional.
I make sure that the gerbils are all male. All I need is one female in the mix, and then it's Babyville. It'll be cute for few weeks, but then I'll have a half dozen mini-gerbils of both sexes who follow back woods mating rituals and have no problems impregnating their sisters. Then it's Babyville II, which my little glass tank won't be big enough to hold. I'll be either pestering everyone I know to take a gerbil, or just getting a snake.
I had nothing to do one day, and wanted to be entertained by small creatures, so I gave #4 and #5 the run of the apartment. Every once in a while I let them out of the glass tank, not in their balls but just roaming free. They love it. Hours and hours of constant scurrying, finding every crack and crevice in the place.
The hard part is catching them. I'm not 100% sure they can't squeeze under the front door, so there's a concern one of them'll be mistaken for a mouse and trampled by the people upstairs. Usually I throw a coat or towel over a part of a wall he's scurrying by, then block the ends and scoop him up. But my apartment was in a state of detritus, and there was no clear wall. This would be tough.
I left them alone for a few hours. #5 darted under my bed, and #4 found the fridge. Let me tell you about my fridge. One of the door shelves has a bent coat hangar holding the ketchup and other condiments from falling to the floor. A freezer door shelf doesn't even have that, and frozen loaves of bread roll off when I open it fast. There's two large glitter stickers of unnamed saints surrounded by flowers and fat winged babies. The crisper is full of Pepsi cans. And the decorative trim at the very bottom is missing, with plenty of space for gerbils to hide under.
I opened the fridge and propped the door open. Cold air rolled out and found the floor, right to where that little bugger was bunkered. Heh heh heh. Sure enough, within thirty seconds he popped his head over the metal to see where the glacier was. I wasn't prepared for this, so I just made a clumsy lunge with one hand at him. Gone.
That was my life for the next two days. I went to work, came back, and sat by the fridge ready to grab. I tried to set up little traps, but catching a fuzzy chicken wing without hurting it is harder than it looks. I'd put a Milk and Honey Drop (they look like yellow choclate chips) on the floor, and as soon as I turned my back it'd be gone. I went to sleep, and #5 would occasionally scurry on the covers and crawl on my face. This wasn't freaky to me, although it did make me realize there's a quark's weight in difference between gerbils and mice.
Jeff was staying with me then, so he made himself useful and caught #5. #5 took a wrong turn into my pile of recycleables in the kitchen, and found himself stuck next to a garage bag full of empty milk gallons. Jeff snatched him up, and back in the brig. #4 took a little more time. After countless booby traps and towels propped up with pencils, I just put the food bag on the ground, and he crawled into it. Lift up the bag, he's trapped inside, and bang, back to the brig.
#4 died a few weeks later. He was dug into his mulch, with the live one sleeping on top of him, so it was a day or two before I noticed. He died the way he lived: hoping I wouldn't notice him.
I'm not racist, and I try not to be with the gerbils either. I go for the first guy that the pet store employee can figure out is a male, regardless of color. This backfired with #6, who also had black fur and also had a white spot on his chest. This was a carbon copy of #5.
#6 was a jumper. He'd bend down a bit, get his legs ready, and then BOOM he1d bounce off the screen over the tank. He also liked gnawing on the metal ring holding the water bottle in place. If he wasn't doing either of these, the only way to tell them apart was to put my hand in the cage. #5 would sniff out of curiosity, like at a new paper towel roll, and then a hesitant nibble, because that's what paper towel rolls are for. #6 would sink in rather quickly, and not let go. I'd pull my finger up, and he's still be hanging there like a clip-on earring.
A few weeks ago, #6 died. I wasn't all that positive, but the remaining gerbil was a hesitant nibbler, so he was #5. He had no problem with nibbling out the throat of #6, however. Why cannibalized neck meat is the best part of the gerbil, I don't know.
This would just be an endless pattern. One would die, I'd replace him with another one, a few months later another one would die, and I'd be in triple digits in a few years. This was a marriage to these buggers.
But what were my options? If an elementary school wanted them, I'd be happy to hand over the tank. But then there'd be the day when the third graders would come in to find Mr. Fluffy eviscerated by Captain Rodent. If I let the one single gerbil die out, his last months would be lonely. And then I'd still have the tank and wheel and all.
The bag of gerbil food was almost running out. So was the bag of mulch. I wouldn't have a better time to get rid of them than now.
I waited a few days. #5 hung in there. Just a few days of food left. I emptied it all in his dish, then threw the bag out. It's now or never.
They always bury their food, so at a glance I couldn't tell how much he had left. I gave him a Milk and Honey drop every day, just in case the mulch was just covering more mulch.
Oh hell. I couldn't let this guy starve to death.
I went to the pet store and got a five pound bag of gerbil food. The store was out of gerbils, so I hit another store, which was also out. A third store, oddly enough, was bursting with them. Maybe they migrate.
#7 is mostly albino. He's got red eyes, but he's a grayish tone instead of pure white. The first night he came in the tank, he stomped his feet while standing on them, like the Lord of the Dance.
It turns out this is the male's mating dance. I've got gay gerbils. They consummated the relationship soon after that.
They're still available, forwarding list, if someone knows of an elementary school itching for pets. They're perpetually active, have no pre-attached names, and will eventually teach a valuable lesson about life and how it ends up with rodents eating you. Parochial schools might not like their lifestyle choices, but they promise to be good Christians during school hours.
No Richard Geres need apply.